Monthly Archives: June 2016

Featured

Nigeria’s Delta State has launched the ‘Fast Track 90’ digital system designed for the acquisition of legal titles for landed property.

Historically an onerous process fraught with bottlenecks, bureaucracy and prone to fraud, the issuance of Certificate-of-Occupancy (C-of-O) to property owners in Delta State will, going forward, be fast tracked to 90 days and fraud-proofed, claims pbDigital, a division of South African customer communications firm PBSA, and the company that developed the technology behind the digital system.

Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, unveiled the Fast Track 90 scheme at the end of March, saying one of the biggest hindrances to investors was the high cost and delays associated with acquiring the legal titles to landed property.

“Fast Track 90, an innovative policy of this administration designed to enhance ease of business in the state, has been initiated to overcome the bottlenecks that have become a recurring decimal in obtaining C-of-Os, it will take a maximum of ninety days for land owners to obtain their C-of-Os from the Ministry of Lands and Surveys and the new system is fast, transparent and in line with global best practices,” said Okowa.

Fast Track 90 relies on a software platform – recently developed specifically for the project – which connects to PBSA’s High Security Module Cloud Server infrastructure in South Africa. The solution is a hybrid, digital certificate issuing and verification solution for certificates that also need to be printed on paper.

Leon van der Merwe, head of pbDigital, explains: “Smatforms, a channel partner of PBSA in Nigeria, approached PBSA for a solution to digitise the paper-based issuing process for Delta State C-of-O documents. The solution-platform is built on pbDigital’s cloud technology that uses state-of-the-art cryptography to embed digital signatures in PDF documents. The system is an end-to-end solution for issuing these documents.”

Certificate verification

The printed certificate that is issued to the citizen contains an embedded QR code, explains Van der Merwe. “When the QR code is scanned with any generic, free QR code scanner using an online smart device, the original electronic document is opened from a secure cloud location. The electronic version of the document and the printed paper copy presented by the citizen can be compared and must have exactly the same content.

“The authenticity of the electronic document can also be verified by using a free version of Adobe PDF Reader to verify the signatures.

“The digital signatures on the document that were applied by the official authorities when the document was produced, carry X.509 personal cryptographic properties. During the verification process, these signature properties will have the verified personal information and Adobe AATL (Adobe Approved Trust List) certificate information embedded in each digital signature.”

Featured

New, South African developed digital signature technology sits behind a major breakthrough for Nigeria’s Delta State government, which kicks off its “Fast Track 90” scheme – a new digital system for the acquisition of legal titles for landed property.

Historically an onerous process fraught with bottlenecks, bureaucracy and prone to fraud, the issuance of Certificate-of-Occupancy (C-of-O) to property owners in Delta State will, going forward, be fast tracked to 90 days and fraud-proofed – thanks to a system written by pbDigital, a division of South African customer communications firm PBSA.

Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, unveiled the Fast Track 90 scheme at the end of March, saying one of the biggest hindrances to investors was the high cost and delays associated with acquiring the legal titles to landed property in Delta State, Nigeria’s oil and agricultural producing state.

“Fast Track 90, an innovative policy of this administration designed to enhance ease of business in the state, has been initiated to overcome the bottlenecks that have become a recurring decimal in obtaining C-of-Os, it will take a maximum of ninety days for land owners to obtain their C-of-Os from the Ministry of Lands and Surveys and the new system is fast, transparent and in line with global best practices,” said Okowa.

The solution was positioned as having significant benefits for Delta State, including much faster turnaround times, considerably reduced C-of-O fees, security surety and, ultimately, increased investment in the state.

The tech behind Fast Track 90
Fast Track 90 relies on a software platform – recently developed specifically for the project – which connects to PBSA’s High Security Module Cloud Server infrastructure in South Africa. The solution is a hybrid, digital certificate issuing and verification solution for certificates that also need to be printed on paper.

Leon van der Merwe, head of pbDigital, explains: “Smatforms, a channel partner of PBSA in Nigeria, approached PBSA for a solution to digitise the paper-based issuing process for Delta State C-of-O documents. The solution-platform is built on pbDigital’s cloud technology that uses state-of-the-art cryptography to embed digital signatures in PDF documents. The system is an end-to-end solution for issuing these documents.”

The software system features four main fully integrated platforms:

Certificate Creator – a platform to import the variable data of the citizen that appears on the certificate.

PDF and QR Code Creator – a platform that produces the digital certificates, each with its own unique QR code for printing.

Digital Signature Workflow – a platform that allows the certificates to go through a digital approval and sign-off process.

Certificate Manager – a platform that gives management full visibility throughout the certificate creation, sign-off and post certificate management processes.

Certificate verificationThe printed certificate that is issued to the citizen contains an embedded QR code, explains Van der Merwe. “When the QR code is scanned with any generic, free QR code scanner using an online smart device, the original electronic document is opened from a secure cloud location. The electronic version of the document and the printed paper copy presented by the citizen can be compared and must have exactly the same content.

“The authenticity of the electronic document can also be verified by using a free version of Adobe PDF Reader to verify the signatures.

“The digital signatures on the document that were applied by the official authorities when the document was produced, carry X.509 personal cryptographic properties. During the verification process, these signature properties will have the verified personal information and Adobe AATL (Adobe Approved Trust List) certificate information embedded in each digital signature.”

Although developed for Delta State’s new C-of-O scheme, pbDigital’s digital certificate software can be used in any process involving the issuance of printed documents in need of future verification. “The software speeds up business processes, digitises workflow – creating a full audit trail – and completely eradicates fraud,” concludes Van der Merwe.

Featured

The SignFlow team has made a technological breakthrough that gives users the ability to carry out face-to-face document signing and turn a simple electronic signature into a certifiable digital signature with a full audit trail, on the fly.

Ideal for face-to-face contractual signing, the new SignFlow feature allows users to have documents signed in a face-to-face environment, with a graphical signature that is linked to the signer’s identity, cellphone number and email address. This provides the SignFlow user the opportunity to witness the signature, which – backed by a digital certificate – is 100% legal.

While the use of electronic signatures obtained via mechanisms such as handheld signature pads is commonplace, SignFlow has taken the practice to the next level and is the only solution on the market that takes an e-signature and turns it into a digital signature, with the signer’s information embedded into a digital certificate.

SignFlow Face-to-Face is not just the scribble of a signature with a mouse – it is a fully-fledged, legally certifiable digital signature with all the security and non-repudiation benefits that come with it.

On top of this, the Face-to-Face signature from SignFlow has all the auditing advantages of a digital signature – another area in which it trumps electronic signatures. This means that, after the document has been signed and the PDF downloaded, the audit trail of the person that signed can be seen in the PDF document – allowing the user to validate the person’s signature using Adobe Acrobat.

A digital signature differs fundamentally from an electronic signature. An electronic signature has no active verification capability built into it – nor does it come with a traceable audit trail – leaving it wide open to fraud and repudiation.

A digital signature, on the other hand, is created using a cryptographic operation that creates a hash-code unique to both the signer and the content, so that it cannot be copied, forged or tampered with. In this case there is strong proof of the signer’s identity, and the data integrity of the document is totally protected.